What is the Heritage Party in Wales?

David KurtenGetty Images

David Kurten founded the Heritage Party four years ago

Heritage Party candidates are standing in six of the 32 Welsh constituencies in next week's UK general election, around a fifth of Welsh seats.

But how did the party emerge and what does it represent?

Heritage is a small, right-wing party describing itself as socially conservative.

It has been registered as a British political party for nearly four years.

Founded by former UKIP London Assembly member David Kurten, the Heritage Party first stood in the London elections and English local council polls in 2021, also putting up a candidate in a single ward, in Anglesey, in the 2022 Welsh local elections.

Heritage contested a seat in the Northern Ireland Assembly the following year and has put its hat in the ring in eight UK Parliamentary by-elections since May 2021.

The number of votes the party garnered in those by-elections varied from a low of 33 (0.1% of the vote) to a high of 468 (1.6%).

Now, at this summer's general election, Heritage has candidates in Wales, England and Scotland.

What does the Heritage Party stand for?

In a party election broadcast, on 24 June, Mr Kurten accused successive governments of leading the United Kingdom "down a path of managed decline", arguing ministers and political parties at Westminster had been "ruining our nation, our culture, our history, and our heritage".

"We desperately need a change from the policies and agendas which have been pushed over the last few decades," he said.

"The agenda of mass immigration, the agenda of net zero, the woke agenda, by which we have comprehensive sexuality education, going into our children's schools and teaching them things which are unscientific and very, very damaging to their upbringing.

"The Heritage Party will change all that because we have the positive policies and principles which we need to restore our nation."

What other policies does it have?

The key policies the party promotes include:

  • protecting "traditional family values"

  • controlling the UK's borders

  • ensuring there are no further lockdowns

  • supporting freedom of speech, if it does not incite violence, crime, or directly threaten another person

  • preventing schools promoting messages undermining "the picture of the traditional nuclear family as the best model of family"

  • abandoning the commitment to net-zero carbon dioxide emissions

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